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Instructional League Roster and Steven Matz Update

Instructional League started for the Mets a week ago. It’s basically like spring training in the fall for the team’s better prospects who can expect to start 2013 at St. Lucie and below, which includes Savannah, Brooklyn and Kingsport, or were drafted in 2012. Guys who have been around for a few years and are looking at AA for next year, including college pitchers who were drafted before 2012, do not usually go to instructs.

There are drills and fundamentals work in the morning. Some days the guys play split-squad games and sometimes they make the drive down to Jupiter to play the Marlins or Cardinals or host one of those teams in Port St. Lucie.

Instructs does not generate any useful statistics, but who attends instructs is the first valuable piece of information, and sometimes updated scouting reports are illuminating. Also, often position switches begin in instructs where there is the time to really teach and drill.

To that end, the Mets’ full instructs roster is attached at the bottom of the post.

Roster Notes– Aderlin Rodriguez is listed as a 3B/1B. He began playing first in 2012, accounting for 10 games between Savannah (7) and St. Lucie (3). He was steadier this year at third, making fewer errors 30, compared to 44 in 2011, and upping his fielding percentage from .878 to .897, but he still could end up at first. His 2012 improvement at third should buy him another year at the position.
– SS Germen Rosario, the Mets big international signing this year, and OF Vincente Lupo, who hit a loud .343/.500/.608 in 65 games in the DSL, are in camp. I read that as very clear signals that both will begin 2013 playing for a stateside affiliate.

Steven MatzMat is not on the official instructs roster. However, he is in St. Lucie and on a throwing program. The lefty was shut down at the end of July with discomfort in his shoulder area, but the Mets’ doctors did not believe his injury was “severe.” Matz lit up Appalachian League radar guns with mid-high 90s gas, touching 98 on his way to a 1.55 ERA and 34 strikeouts in 29 innings.